Prince Paul on Chris Rock's Hip-Hop Pedigree

Since some folks have read Chris Rock's Top 25 Hip-Hop Albums list in Rolling Stone and wondered if he really wrote it himself, here's a convo I had with Prince Paul last year about Chris' status as a "head":

You've worked with both Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock, which one would you say is a bigger hip-hop head out of the two?

Prince Paul: Man, it's hard to say cuz both of them are crazy! But I think Chris is a fanatic. And Chris also DJ-ed, like, on the block when he was a kid. He has a little DJ set at his house, and he has pictures of him when he was DJ-ing, I guess he was like 15, 16.

So he's definitely a head, and he'll call me up and hold conversations for like an hour and a half, on what's new: "Ehhh, such-and-such record is okay, but track number whatever he had whatever, and I talked to Rick Rubin last week and told him he should have Jay-Z do blah blah blah.." He'll call me up with an idea, like "Paul I've got an idea for you, you know what your next album cover should be?" So he's definitely into it.

I don't have that type of relationship with Dave Chappelle. Like, I met him through Chris, but I haven't sat down with him and chit-chatted with him for any length of time, so it would be kinda unfair [to compare].